"My Thing" and "God's Thing"

Max Stirner's "The Ego and its Own" (Der Einziger und sein Eigentum) was a fundamental text for Ernst Jünger´s development of the figure of the Anarch. In Eumeswil, Ernst Jünger summarizes the "cardinal points or the axioms of Stirner's system, if one cares to call it that" as being just two - two however which "suffice for thorough reflection":

1) That is not My business.
2) Nothing is more important than I.

During my own reading of Stirner, I find myself regularly re-reading the first chapter, "All things are nothing to me". I see in this chapter the whole metaphysical basis for Stirner's radical concept of individual autonomy; it also suffices to corroborate Jünger's summary. A few quotes from the chapter are in order. This first one opens it:

What is not supposed to be my concern? First and foremost the good cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of mind and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. 'Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!'

Stirner goes on to explain how God, mankind, the Sultan have all only concerned themselves with their own egoistic concerns. The individual on the other hand is supposed to forget his own egoistic cause and serve theirs. To which Stirner protests:

God and mankind have concerned themselves with nothing and for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one (der Einzige).

If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my 'emptiness'. I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing (schöpferische Nichts), the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.

Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the 'good cause' must by my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.

The divine is God's concern; the human, 'man's'. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, the good, just, free, etc, but solely what is mine (das Meinige), and it is not a general one, but is - unique (einzig), as I am unique.

Nothing is more to me than myself!

Stirner wants to create a tabula rasa by actively clearing the field of his consciousness from all the egoistic external causes which impose themselves on him and want to manipulate him - religion ('God'), humanity ('mankind'), other powerful men ('the Sultan'). He reduces them all to nothing by actively annihilating their psychological relevence to him - they mean nothing to him. An inner void is created, which, he explains, is not emptiness, but rather a creative nothing, within which he, as all that remains, is free to create his world anew.

For when nothing else such as God, mankind, society fills him with its claims, then all that remains is he, the ego, alone in a state of absolute creative freedom. And out of himself, what is his naturally arises to fill the void, which is to say, 'his property'. Thus the title of the book, "The Ego and his Property".

(A double title would be more accurate - "The Ego/Only One and his Property" - since it is not just the ego that is critical but the fact that it alone remains when all else has been psychologically annihilated.)

At this point, I would make a personal distinction regarding the Ego and God. It is a departure from Stirner's personal feelings towards 'God', but perhaps not from the spirit of the Only One. And I suspect not from the spirit of Jünger´s Anarch.

As a result of his own personal and cultural background, Stirner clearly saw 'God' as one of the foreign causes that had so often distracted or perverted the attention of egoists through the ages from their own causes. Thus God and religion had to be effectively annihilated within the ego's consciousness, so that it was empty and free to realize its own cause.

I fully agree with psychologically annihilating all external egos that want to steal my cause from me. But in my personal case, I never had a strong influence of religion in my upbringing; thus, in this respect at least, I have nothing to annul or fight against within myself. "God and religion are already nothing within me", to put it in his terms.

However I like to believe that higher powers exist in the universe, and even that they may see a bigger and clearer picture than I do. I call these powers 'the force of destiny', but others may call them 'God'; and in what follows, destiny should be remembered when the word 'God' is used.

Ideally I would like to reconcile myself as an ego with God-destiny. For me, this is possible, and I express it as "doing my thing":

God-destiny - no less than I - wants nothing more and nothing less than that I 'do my thing'. Doing my thing will be suffice me for my lifetime, and it will also be right for me, since it corresponds to what I am.

God-destiny would be as disappointed by my straying into irrelevent philanthropy as into irrelevent 'vice'. But do not misunderstand me - my thing will certainly comprehend activities and natural impulses that are normally called philanthropic and vicious. But what meaning have these categories for me - from my perspective, I can do no 'good' or 'bad' thing, only my thing. Indeed, what is 'good' for me is doing my thing; and what is 'bad' is not doing my thing, but the things of someone or something else's.

I can equally well call this God's perspective, because he too only wants me to do my thing. Indeed, he prays that I will do it, because he created me to do my thing.

If, as a do-gooder, I try to do more than my thing, that is, someone or something else's things, then I necessarily go off-track, I 'sin' in the original Greek meaning of missing the mark. Neither will doing some other 'good', thing compensate for not realizing my thing, for I can only ever do that other thing imperfectly, bungle it in comparison to how I would succeed in my thing. This mistake may even go very sour, as Jünger points out in Eumeswil:  

"As for the do-gooders, I am familiar with the horrors that were perpetrated in the name of humanity, Christianity, progress. I have studied them. I do not know whether I am correctly quoting a Gallic thinker: ‘Man is neither an animal nor an angel; but he becomes a devil when he tries to be an angel.’ ”

I have time, energy and ability only enough for my thing - anything else I do will result in an imperfect realization of what I was born for, what God, nature, my destiny created me for - doing my thing, nothing else.

So make yourself, your 'God' and your destiny happy and do your thing - nothing more is asked of you and you can do nothing better than that!

Technology, principles and sustainability

This blog entry regarding the importance of restraining principles in the exploitation of technology may seem to have little to do with the anarch or Ernst Jünger, however it did emerge from a discussion of whether Jacques Allul was an anarchist or something other. Hence I include it.

(I can only imagine Ernst Jünger would agree with Allul's ideas, since they correspond closely to his notions of the titanic abuse of science. His brother Friedrich Georg Jünger also often wrote about the unprincipled application of technology.)

As Allul explains in this interview, in certain middle age societies, a rule regarding technology existed which forbad the use of iron tools in working the earth. Although the people of the time knew that these would undoubtedly have been more efficient, the earth was considered a mother whom the use of hard tools would have injured.

In the light of our unrestrained use of technology today, we may think such a rule out-dated, inapplicable to us and above all inefficient - and yet when we look at how mining (and mechanized agriculture) have degraded and impoverished the earth in the last centuries, we understand that there was a real sense to this rule, that it contained simpler but greater wisdom than our technological cleverness. Such a rule or principle would have prevented the rape of the earth that we have witnessed in recent centuries.

Back then the extent to which our "iron" technology would progress would have been inconceivable - and probably considered demonic. Yet in consideration only of their own simple technology, without reference to all the mistakes we have since made, these civilizations followed a principle which protected the earth and ultimately also them. And had we maintained this principle, we would also have avoided our current environmental troubles.

We can learn from this that technology requires the guidance of principles - even when it seems that little damage can be done. One never knows to what extent a a contemporary technological development may progress. A conservative principle protects one from this danger. It allows stability, an equilibrium, to develop in a system - 'thus far and no further'.

That is to say, restraining principles applied to our technology would allow the development of that magical "sustainability" which so fills our rhetoric today.

Above all it must become clear that it is not more and better technology that will bring salvation, sustainability - it is new restraining principles for its use. Whether these are religiously or rationally-based is irrelevent - religious ones would probably work better for the masses.

Incidentally, Allul doesn't come across as an anarchist to me - he evidently values what tradition may offer. It is only the modern desacralization of nature that he objects to.